Good Monday Morning,

It’s cold again. It’s going to snow again and then it’s going to get cold again.

NtM would like to welcome back three of it’s long-term supporters. Thanks.

A blog site from Yonkers called, “Rising Times“ is reporting that Putnam County District Attorney Adam Levy gave a company called WPD Concepts, LLC., a significant amount of money during his 2007 election. The article hints that Mr. Levy spent $75,000 to ensure an uncontested race but I’ll leave that up to the Feds to decipher.

What is interesting is that WPD Concepts has an address at 41 Bridle Ridge Road in Patterson, the residence of Ray McGuire.

Mr. McGuire must have been well paid as he owns two homes in Patterson, the one on Bridle Ridge (Assessed at $544,000) and another on Tammany Hall Rd ($409,000). Sweet.

A 5 minute Google search shows that WPD also must have been a well connected and profitable business! Registered in 2006, it was the darling of ONLY TWO NY Republican candidates since then. Guess which two?

Source: NYS Board of Elections

The plot thickens! Has the NY Journal News or the Courier written about this yet?

What the outcome will be is hard to say. The US Administration is furiously racing to alter its long-held position of supporting the totalitarian regimes that are now falling one by one.

It’s a little late for President Obama to be calling for “reform” in Egypt after the US has steadfastly backed Hosni Mubarak for the past 30 years and I would suspect that the next government formed may not be all that friendly to us. But what President Obama has not done is called for Hosni Mubarak to step down and that is a tactical and political mistake we will pay for in generations to come.

That we still back tyrants like Mubarak lies at the root of why the US traditionally backs totalitarian regimes even though we claim to “spread democracy” around the world:

When push comes to shove the US stands against democracy as right-wing, totalitarian governments are better for profits.

Anyway, if you’d like to watch the events live, point your browser here.

82% of all Putnam County based businesses employ less than ten people accounting for more than 7300 jobs and these are the companies that need help, not Camarda*Marts, but the mom and pop business that are the backbone of our communities and our economy. Think about that the next time some rich developer comes, hat in hand, for a taxpayer handout and remember the names of the politicians who give it to them.

It’s going to be an ugly year in Kent as the Forces of Evil do battle against the Forces of Don’t Change Anything with the outcome deciding the town’s future for the next few years. A well financed independent candidate running on a non-D or R line might just be able to bring some sanity to things.

With Leibell out of the picture and The Senator Who Shall Not Be Named busy in Albany, the Forces of Evil will have to make do on their own this time.

1. Bill Buck in Cape Horn
2. Walkway Over the Hudson: Poughkeepsie footbridge spurs development and retail boom
3. Yorktown to raze historic farmhouse
4. In Symbolic Move, Philadelphia Calls for Gas Drilling Ban
5. Nan Hayworth seeking to block standards to reduce toxic pollution
6. More U.S. Soldiers Killed Themselves Than Died in Combat in 2010
7. Drilling in ANWR back on the map
8. We Can Do Better: The Overlooked Importance of Professional Journalism
9. Men more likely to stick with girlfriends who sleep with other women than other men

Bill Buck in Cape Horn

This article was first posted at Plant Talk by Plant Talk.

Ed. note: NYBG scientist and Mary Flagler Cary Curator of Botany, Bill Buck is currently on expedition to the islands off Cape Horn, the southernmost point in South America, to study mosses and lichens. Follow his journeys on Plant Talk.

January 23, 2011, Isla Grande de la Tierra del Fuego, Puerto Consuelo, Seno Chasco, Chile, 54° 32′S, 71° 31′W

Although I am writing this blog daily, it is often impossible to send it. We were told that the modem that we rented would work anywhere, but in reality it needs a clear view to the north. Often times, though, our ship is anchored in a sheltered area with tall, snow-capped mountains on most sides of us. With the severe and changeable weather here, the saying “any port in a storm” takes on extra meaning! So, I continue to write and send them out whenever the modem decides it is in the mood.

Early this morning (5 a.m.) the captain moved the ship from our previous site to the sound directly west. When I awoke to the engine starting, I knew it would be 3-4 hours before we reached our next site, and that we could sleep in for awhile. Maybe an hour later it became obvious that we had left the protected sound for more open waters. The ship started rocking violently. For most of us, it was like rocking a baby in a cradle and put us back to sleep. Only one person felt a little queasy and had to take something for seasickness. Fortunately, so far, no one has actually gotten sick. In my previous trip to the region, on our second day our, we hit a large storm which crashed 12 foot waves over the ship for hours on end. As our bunkroom was transformed into a vomitorium, I was the only non-crew member who didn’t get sick. Since our bunkroom on this trip has minimal ventilation at best, it is a true blessing that this time no one has gotten sick.

It was immediately obvious when we entered the next sound, suddenly the waters were much calmer. At about 8:30 a.m., the ship stopped. I assumed that meant we were at our next site. Such was not the case. Rather, we were taking on  fresh water. To do this, the ship will pull up to a waterfall and one of the crew scrambles up the cliff face with a plastic bucket that is outfitted with a hose coming out of the bottom of it. The bucket goes into the waterfall and the end of the hose is placed into the hatch of the water tank, on top of the ship. We are in a totally uninhabited place, one that gets around 12 feet of rain a year, much of which at higher elevations falls as snow. So even in mid-summer, given that there are no large mammals to pollute it, the snow-melt water is pure and cold, which is good because it is the only fresh water we have. After watching the crew member (José) go up the cliff face like a monkey, I told him now we just need to teach him to collect mosses!

Not long after we replenished our fresh water supply, we arrived at the south end of the sound. Once again the landscape is spectacular. Southern beech forests come right down to the sea and are developed even on very steep slopes in only slightly sheltered places where a bit more soil accumulates. It is amazing to realize that what we are seeing has gone unchanged, except for climatic variation, for hundreds, if not thousands of years. There is virtually no man-made impact in the region, and we do our best to make sure we leave behind only divots where we have collected our specimens. Who knows how many decades it will take these small blemishes to regrow. All growth here is slow due to the cool temperatures.

Again today we split up, with Jim and Blanka choosing to go up the slope immediately next to where we were anchored. Juan and I chose to go around the end of the sound to an area where two waterfalls merge near the sea. After our ablutions (didn’t I mention our toilet malfunctioned on the first day?), Juan and I split up. Juan headed to higher elevations where snow not only persists, but is added to with each new storm, while I stayed at a lower elevation and worked along a small, raging stream coming down from a lake. Often I would stop along the stream, lay on the wet ground next to it (is it any wonder I get so wet in the field?!), and reach my hand down into the water, feeling along the bottom for submerged mosses. Some of my most interesting collections have come from doing this. Collecting in this fashion can be slow, but it is important to not get just numerous collections, but also interesting collections. And, with four pairs of eyes in different sites, we are hoping to get as much of the local bryodiversity as possible.

Much to our delight, the plant dryers that we built seem to be working. However, we’re collecting faster than the dryers can work, and so we have to rotate the collections regularly. At this stage we’re still finding species new for the flora as well as new for science. But most are known from the region. However, their distribution in the region is not at all known and so it is important to collect the common species as well as the rare ones. The weather today was the best we have seen so far. We actually saw the sun from time to time, as it alternated with light rain, sometimes repeating the pattern every couple of minutes. This is hardly what most people would think of as good weather, but we do!

We are scheduled to stay in this sound for two days before starting back toward Punta Arenas. We will stop at Seno Agostini on the way back because this is the site of Mt. Buckland. This peak is just north of our flora region, but it is the site where a moss was collected in the 1940s (Bucklandia bartramii, named for the peak) but not found since. Since this species is in the genus that Juan is working on for his doctoral dissertation, and he would love fresh material for DNA studies, we are happy to oblige. We are heading back to Punta Arenas to pick up our colleague from The Field Museum in Chicago, Matt von Konrat, who was delayed and couldn’t arrive when the rest of us did. It will also give us a chance to bathe and get clothes washed before heading out again.

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Walkway Over the Hudson:
Poughkeepsie footbridge spurs development and retail boom

The 14-acre site on Poughkeepsie’s waterfront where Louis Kaufman’s company plans to build a large upscale condo complex is a former lumber-treatment plant abandoned for more than a decade – and looks it.

The only color there is the graffiti that covers the old Dutton Lumber site’s beat-up industrial buildings, nestled by the frozen Hudson River.

“It’s a pretty awesome site, but you have to have vision,” says Kaufman, project manager for the O’Neill Group in Hackensack, N.J. “It’s right by the train station, right on the river, right by the walkway – it’s as good as you can get under the circumstances of today’s economy.”

The 1.3-mile former railroad bridge connecting Highland to Poughkeepsie, now called the Walkway Over the Hudson, looms over the site. The wildly popular pedestrian bridge − the longest in the world, according to the nonprofit behind it − has drawn more than 750,000 tourists, three times the expected number, since its debut in October 2009.

Read More

Yorktown to raze historic farmhouse

YORKTOWN — For 199 years, a farmhouse of one of the town’s oldest families has overlooked Crompond Road.

Last used as offices for school administrators, the white, two-story house will be gone by year’s end.

Former Landmarks Commission member Raymond Gunther called it a fine example of post-Colonial architecture. “As such we thought it was worth saving,” he said.

Gunther researched the farmhouse’s storied history, penning a 2004 report for the now-defunct commission.

John Hazzard Strang built it in 1812. His father, Daniel Strang, purchased the surrounding land from Col. Philip Verplanck in 1728.

Read More

In Symbolic Move, Philadelphia Calls for Gas Drilling Ban

This article was first posted at ProPublica: Articles and Investigations by ProPublica.

by Nicholas Kusnetz

As the federal government continues to study a controversial gas drilling technique and the states tinker with their own regulations, some cities and towns are trying to halt local drilling. Philadelphia became the latest to do that on Thursday, when city officials called for at least a temporary ban on new wells in the watershed that serves the city’s taps.

The request was part of a set of recommendations in a report approved by the city council asking federal and state authorities to tighten drilling regulations. The report also urges the city-owned utility to avoid buying gas that comes from the Marcellus Shale, the layer of rock that stretches under much of Pennsylvania and is considered one of the world’s largest gas fields.

But the vote was largely symbolic. The utility doesn’t buy any Marcellus Shale gas and has no plans to — and new drilling in the Delaware River Basin is already on hold. The idea was to send a message, said Michelle Wilson, a spokeswoman for Curtis Jones, Jr., the councilman who sponsored the report.

“Philadelphia is a major city and we’re hoping that behind this push, that we can use it for leverage,” Wilson said.

Read More

Nan Hayworth seeking to block standards to reduce toxic pollution

WASHINGTON – A total of 123 House members from 35 states, including Congresswoman Nan Hayworth (NY-19) are co-sponsoring legislation that would block EPA standards to reduce toxic, smog and soot pollution from industrial plants and other sources, according to the Natural Resources Defense Council. Carbon Dioxide pollution increases the risk of heat stress, promotes the spread of infectious diseases and makes it more difficult to reduce smog pollution, which threatens the health of asthma sufferers and others with respiratory problems, the group said.

The NRDC’s director of the Climate Control Center, Dan Lashoff, said four bills would attack implementation and enforcement of the Clean Air Act.

“Our elected representatives should hold big polluters accountable, not help them block the strong safeguards that would protect our health and quality of life,” he said. “Unfortunately these bad air boosters, who have collectively taken over $27 million in campaign contributions from big polluters during their careers, are choosing to standing up for the polluters instead of public health.”

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More U.S. Soldiers Killed Themselves Than Died in Combat in 2010

For the second year in a row, more American soldiers—both enlisted men and women and veterans—committed suicide than were killed in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Excluding accidents and illness, 462 soldiers died in combat, while 468 committed suicide. A difference of six isn’t vast by any means, but the symbolism is significant and troubling. In 2009, there were 381 suicides by military personnel, a number that also exceeded the number of combat deaths.

Earlier

this month

, military authorities announced that suicides amongst active-duty soldiers had slowed in 2010, while suicides amongst reservists and people in the National Guard had increased. It was proof, they said, that the frequent psychological screenings active-duty personnel receive were working, and that reservists and guardsmen, who are more removed from the military’s medical bureaucracy, simply need to begin undergoing more health checks. This new data, that American soldiers are now more dangerous to themselves than the insurgents, flies right in the face of any suggestion that things are “working.” Even if something’s working, the system is still very, very broken.

Read More

Drilling in ANWR back on the map

Lisa Murkowski is back in the Senate and once again she is backing opening up the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil production.

Murkowski, who serves as the ranking member of the Senate’s Energy and Natural Resources Committee, wasted no time during the committee’s first week back at work, pushing for speed on opening up ANWR.

We Can Do Better: The Overlooked Importance of Professional Journalism

The Web is a galaxy of information that is rapidly expanding. Blogs and online magazines are helping shape the future of this Information Age that we live in. Those of us who read, write and design blogs and online magazines possess extraordinary power and potential. How will we choose to use it?

If you use your website to publish news, events, opinions or interviews, you should familiarize yourself with the basics of journalism. These tools can help us develop and share information that is exciting, intelligent, and responsible. They can provide guidance and support as you pursue a career or hobby writing online.

This article is accompanied by examples of photojournalism, which is the practice of communicating news through photographs. The above photo of a 1940′s newsstand in New York City was taken by photojournalist Ruth Orkin

We, designers, go on all day about the usability of our WordPress layouts and the readability of our typography, but all of those things have been considered in vain if our writing is poorly spelled, riddled with inaccuracies, or based on second-hand assumptions that will leave our audience misled, confused, or worse. Even if you’re just casually writing about why you personally love/hate the iPad (for example), you can do so in a truthful way (truthful to your own opinions and truthful to the information you are discussing).

Read More

Men more likely to stick with girlfriends who sleep with other women than other men

ScienceDaily (Jan. 27, 2011) — Men are more than twice as likely to continue dating a girlfriend who has cheated on them with another woman than one who has cheated with another man, according to new research from a University of Texas at Austin psychologist.

Women show the opposite pattern. They are more likely to continue dating a man who has had a heterosexual affair than one who has had a homosexual affair.

The study, published last month in the journal Personality and Individual Differences, provides new insight into the psychological adaptations behind men’s desire for a variety of partners and women’s desire for a committed partner. These drives have played a key role in the evolution of human mating psychology.

“A robust jealousy mechanism is activated in men and women by different types of cues — those that threaten paternity in men and those that threaten abandonment in women,” says Jaime C. Confer, the study’s lead author and a doctoral candidate in evolutionary psychology.

Confer conducted the study with her father, Mark D. Cloud, a psychology professor at Lock Haven University in Pennsylvania.

Read More

I have a cold. I’m in a bad mood. But it’s nothing a freshly backed loaf of banana bread (w/brown sugar, raisins and sunflower seeds) and enough orange liqueur can’t handle.

Luckily, I wrote the column below over the weekend.

And it’s not the Anniversary, but we’re close. It’s somewhere around here and so we shall celebrate today anyway!

It’s now more than a decade that News That Matters has been around in one incarnation or another.

Remember back in the olden days when we published at Yahoo and then made the move to Google and then to a comprehensive newsletter published three times a week and a website all our own?

Three websites. Four, actually.

You can find News That Matters at PlanPutnam and at Blogger and Posterous, both as “No Country For Sane Men“. And if you’re on Facebook you can find us there, too.

It’s a little crazy living in the USA right about now and with extremism coming at you from mostly right-angles like a warped isosceles triangle, and you need a source that can dissect the news and get it to you in ways you can genuinely understand. And that’s what we’re here for.

PlanPutnam/News That Matters is also this county’s premiere organizational tool and you know that to be true from the many issues and the many victories we have under our belts. I don’t need to list those successful battles for you know what they are and you know your lives are better for it – and that’s the point.

In case you have forgotten where we’ve been, here, in no particular order, are some reminders culled from the last few years:

The Thirty-Eight Billion Fee

This happens every day to thousands of people across the nation and while Bank of America is the most hideously evil of the lot, many banks play this game and billions of dollars are pulled from the economy and go to subsidize executive bonuses, stock dividends, the purchase of Congressmen and Senators, nifty automated teller machines that work so slowly you have to shave again by the time you’re done using them and which cause traffic tie-ups on Friday evenings that CBS radio reports along with, “…and it’s 40 minutes to The George.”

Chickens, Roads and Highways – A Special Report

As first proposed, the issue was one of safety but the project plans say that PHR is as safe as any other road. Then there was the idea that you’d be able to drive from Kent to Peekskill faster and yet, the accidents that have happened generally did so for people traveling way above the speed limit or tailgating. Then it was planned growth in the project area rated at 2% a year which would by 2029, create traffic and backups similar, I guess, to Route 22′s. But a quick look at a map shows that to be so wrong words cannot describe it.

The Tilly Foster Saga Continues…

What will it cost for taxpayers to cover the utility bills, heating, cooling, electricity, etc., and to maintain the walks and roads in all weather conditions vs. the amount of monies generated from sales taxes? I just don’t believe anyone could raise those kinds of funds through sales taxes alone from the Farm. So why not have a profit sharing arrangement? But that’s not in the contract. While Ann Fanizzi, the contract’s most ardent supporter, dreams that Mr. Whipple will build a bed & breakfast and turn the main lodge into full service restaurant, the county will need to foot the entirety of the utility bills and the maintenance of the roads and walkways leading to and surrounding them. I wish I had such a deal with my landlord!

What Being Sick Costs The Nation

When you are sick and on the job your productivity is down which results in a decline in efficiency. When you are sick and cannot work, especially in a job without paid sick days, the local economy is affected. And what happens when you wait until you simply cannot go on and your illness has advanced? How much money is pulled from the economy then? What of your home and family? Will Verizon or Comcast or NYSEG understand when they don’t get paid because of the cost of dealing with an illness that might have been easily treated at the beginning but that has now gotten out of control? They might. But you’ll be sending smoke signals and watching a blank TV screen by candlelight.Will your town’s tax collector say, “No problem Mrs. Smith, pay us when you can”?

Verizon’s Billing Mysteries

FCC Line Charge. This charge also is known as the Federal Subscriber Line Charge, the Federally-Ordered Subscriber Line Charge, Federal Line Cost Charge, and the FCC Subscriber Line Charge. In reality it’s the missing portion of your basic line charge mentioned above. That $8.79 fee should be, if Verizon were open and honest about their charges, $15.20. But they get to “cheat” to give you the impression your actual costs are lower and that the Fed is responsible for $6.41 of it. They’re misleading you and getting away with it.

Shooting Gazelles – Ball supports “Canned Hunting”

Yet, Assemblyman Greg Ball supports this type of hunting, claiming on the floor of the Assembly that if the New York bans the use of exotic, non-native animals from canned hunts held within the state that the next step is that the state will ban the shooting of white -tailed deer, then the state will take away everyone’s guns and finally we’ll all have chips in our backs. (see the video clip here). He also claims he represents ‘thousands of hunters in his district’ whom, one might assume, has given him their blessing to fight for this abominable practice in their name.

Contractors Ripped Off By Putnam County (NY)

In a previous issue I mentioned that a county Legislator suggested that if I had trouble paying the fee that maybe I shouldn’t be in business. Maybe he’s right. Maybe the economy sucks and those fees amount to a hardship. Or maybe no one should have to pay for the right to earn a living in Putnam County.

News That Matters: The Walkway Edition

Kudos need be sent to the organizers of this event. It’s massive scale and scope must have taken thousands of hours and untold patience. Everything ran so smoothly! Even with tens of thousands of people, thousands of cars, city buses, a dozen marching bands, scores of performers, several parades and assorted marauding clowns, trapeze artists and jugglers, (and yes, you can toss in a bevy of politicians,) there wasn’t a hitch to be seen. In fact, even the weather – which promised rain – cooperated beautifully.

Racists Rear Their Ugly Heads in Putnam Again

The misinformation contained in the copy on the website is astonishing in its one-sided shortsightedness and includes a link to an outside website where, if Mexicans were Jews, would read, “Die Juden sind ünser unglück”. No matter that the Comptroller of the State of Texas, among others of equal high position across the nation claim that undocumented workers contribute more to the system in taxes than they use, and that recent immigrants – legal and illegal – have *created* tens of thousands of new jobs, this linked website continues the same lies, mistruths and…. shit. It’s just pure White Supremacist shit.

Kent’s ‘panhandle’

Early maps show Philipstown being more recatngularish from when it was divvied up among the Philipse Family. The 1892 USGS map shows the current westernmost line of Kent, the line that runs along the Philisptown Pike (Route 301) AND the *old* town line as well. That line is missing from the 1941 map which has the current town lines in position.

Questions:

1) When did Kent acquire Hortowntown and,
2) Why?

[Ed note: this article was posted on October 3, 2006 and has still not been answered!]

Tales from the Trail

Why? Well, I added up all the possible promised blocks of votes and it turns out – at best – they represent about 15% of the voters. That’s right: the special interest groups and the armchair politicians and the folk who are in this only for the [insert turgid reference here] added together leave the remaining %85 of the voters unrepresented. But, for such a small group, they sure are organized! And Loud. And they have money.

A TEA Party on the Hill

For the past several weeks the region had been bombarded by an ever-increasing barrage of signs, snail mails, emails and robocalls announcing an event that was either a “RibFest!”, a People’s Convention, a Free BBQ or a rally for Greg Ball and Steve Katz… it all depended on which signs you saw or which advert you read or which phone call you got as they all had slightly different information and I reported on this confusion several days ago. But that didn’t seem to bother the 300 people who attended on Saturday.

Selecting an ESCO

Over half of NYSEG electricity supply customers who didn’t voice their choice last year don’t know their current supply pricing option. And while that may suck for them, it’s been great for us. We thank those customers for not having degrees in Advanced Rocket Science and praise their inability to figure out what their options are. NYSEG has always firmly believed that offering you the best choice is a simple matter of confusing the heck out of you. We are proud to continue that tradition because, face it, you have no choice!

Corporate Welfare, Putnam Style

If I were a better writer and could match the skills of even the most middling of authors, life in Putnam County would make quite excellent reading. But so few publishers would believe what I had written as genuine they’d have to place my book in the fiction section of bookstores and the fantasy section of libraries. But I can assure you that what we experience here as residents is real and genuine even though it reads – and too often feels – as if we’re living in a 1950′s Central American Banana Republic. In only a very few other places around the world, perhaps in one of those central Asian “stans” no one can pronounce, could we write about the depths of malfeasance that passes for government in our bucolic 240 square miles. If Voltaire or Shalom Aleichem were alive today even they could not have surpassed the fantastical mysteries and ironies that abound in our every day lives. Welcome to Putnam County, New York.

Controversy in Pawling? It Depends

At a meeting on July 2nd, 2008, Supervisor Coursen mentioned, after yet another round of public and pointed criticism from Mr. Carey, that the minutes from a recently held Comprehensive Plan meeting had not yet been posted to the town’s website due to a backlog on the Planning Board clerk’s desk. With the meeting continuing on, Supervisor Coursen rose from the dais to get a glass of water when Mr. Carey met her on the side and offered to come into town hall and post those minutes on his own. While that’s a nice thing to offer, what responsible entity would allow a political enemy, especially – and note this – the chair of a political party, access to a town’s website?

Pulte Homes, Adam Levy and Justice Putnam Style

Pulte Homes, Adam Levy and Justice Putnam Style: For what the Town of Carmel and Putnam County has done over the years to Lori Kemp you’d think agents from the human rights court in the Hague would descend from the heavens and arrest anyone who has ever sat on a board in that town. But that didn’t happen for too seldom do those who deserve justice get actually it.

The Great Tefillin Scare

On a short-haul flight the other day a 17 year old kid put on his tefflin to pray. A flight attendant asked what he was doing, “praying,” he replied. She notified the pilot. In the flight attendant’s description she said “…it had wires running from it and going up to his fingers,” What she didn’t know was that they go directly to God! but, I digress…

Breaking News: Putnam’s Most Out Person Accused of Autophobia

In a stunning revelation, Putnam County’s most ‘out’ political figure was accused by an alleged staffer from the Nan Hayworth campaign of making accusatory slurs against himself based on his sexual orientation.

Remember when…

From the Patterson Crossing Scoping Session: January 2005

A Walk on the new Cornwall Hill DEC property: Summer 2004

Choices for Sustainable Living Conference: November 2005

Putnam Valley Dems Election Night Celebration: November 2005

FrOGS Announces NAWCA Grant: October 2002. Dave Tobias and Mike Griffin.

Croton Watershed Meeting: October 2004

Charlie Silver – Chief Watershed Scientist, Jim Tierney – Watershed Inspector General,
Peter Lehner, Chief Environmental Attorney. All work for the State Attorney General’s Office

And some Pictures of the Day shots: (Click on them – they get bigger!)

Ice Pond

Dean Road DEP property

Bear Mt. Bridge from Anthony’s Nose

Glynwood from Fahnestock State Park

Daniel Nimham Pow Wow

Thunderstorm over eastern Putnam from Shenandoah Mt.

Bull Hill (Mt. Taurus) from Round Hill in Fahnestock Park

The Kent “Cow”

Collaborative Concepts Out door Art Exhibit at Saunders’ Farm

There more. There’s nearly eighteen-thousand articles and posts since we began and that we’ve lasted as long as we have is a testament to my insanity – and your perseverance. Let’s keep that going.

Since July 18, 2000

10637 messages at the old Yahoo site
3508 messages at Google.
3738 messages posted to PlanPutnam/News That Matters

17,883 posts/messages/comments!

You’re going to need me for the next four years.

JmG

Thanks to AC, DB, GG and MH-L for their support of what we do and welcome too, to our new readers.

According to the weather station my neighbor runs the temperature topped out at 100.1 ºF at just after 4PM yesterday and the National Weather Service says there is a 0% chance of snow over the next 24-36 hours.

The Putnam Valley Farmer’s Market will be open from 3PM until 7PM today at the Lake Peekskill Community Center, #7 Northway, Lake Peekskill.

The Brewster Farmer’s Market will be open today from 9AM – 2PM at the intersection of Routes 6 and 202.

Short-term Hosting for Exchange students Needed, Now!

! Two-Week Hosting Opportunities *Still* Available Now !

[Ed note: World Exchange is based right here in Putnam County]

They can been seen on Facebook and talked to on Skype, but whether or not any will actually be seen in the greater Putnam County area this July 12th to 31st is up in the air.  It is fascinating that high school students from all over the planet can meet, make friends, and exchange ideas—one avatar to another—in a digital living room in Second Life and yet not have the opportunity to meet each other face-to-face while sharing pizza and soda on the porch.

The opportunity is there, but the hosts are not.  Where are you Putnam County?

Nineteen French students, ten boys and four girls ages 15 to 17, and two leaders, are due to arrive here on July 12th for a 20 day homestay, with their sole objective being getting to know America and Americans.

After months of outreach, World Exchange program directors in New Jersey have only been able to find enough families to welcome 10 students, and have turned to national directors Vera and Michael Sklaar in Putnam Valley for help.  “It puzzles me,” Vera says, “because hosting is such a unique, enriching, and educational way for families to engage meaningfully with the world.  Now more than ever we are all part of the same international community, so why not try to get to know our neighbors?  Perhaps because I am from London and Michael has lived abroad for a number of years we understand this a little more clearly.”

If you agree with Vera and Michael and want to take part in this wonderful adventure, they may be reached at: 845 526-2505 or 845 526-2299 or msklaar@worldexchange.org They will be able to show you the students’ applications, photos and “Dear Host Family” letters.  Signing up to host is quick and easy and soon you, too, can be exchanging emails, Skyping and friending each other on Facebook.

The students come with insurance and pocket money. They look forward to being in host families with children of all ages. Their visit is sponsored by World Exchange (www.worldexchange.org), a non-profit organization, which has organized short-term homestays in the Hudson Valley since its founding in 1985.

In Other News:

• Congratulations to Fireman Ken, [Brewster's Ken Claire] for being selected as the top fire safety educator for the year.

• Legislator Tony Fusco got his butt handed to him for sending out 20,000 or so emails for his recent fundraiser. It seems that not only did I get 9 but county employees received them as well with some claiming that they felt pressured to donate to his campaign else their patronage jobs would be in jeopardy. Ahhhh, shades of the Nassau County Republican party back in the good olde days when you kicked back 1% of your salary each year as employment insurance and no one ever dared to complain. Until someone did and the whole house of cards came crashing down in a blaze of lawsuits.

• While we’re talking about Republicans running things, an internal struggle between the forces of Anthony Scannapieco and Vinnie Leibell has erupted into an all-out skirmish that is sure to entertain and amuse. See, county election commissioners were set to be (re)appointed this week but there’s a bill pending in Albany that would prohibit political party Chairmen from serving as commissioners. Leibell’s supporters want the Legislature to wait until after the law is passed which would force Scannapieco to choose between that job and his leadership of the party, while Anthony’s people want the Legislature to act fast so that he would be grandfathered in. But a quick reading of the law says that he’d have to choose in any case as grandfathering is the domain of bad planning and zoning decisions and not election law.

• I’m the founder of an organization that offers a low bid of $150,000 on a 35 acre tax delinquent property – and win it – stiffing the county for $30,000 in property taxes and taking the property off the tax roles, just after I sold a 9 acre lot to the county hospital for $1.5 million. Now I’m going to build 120 subsidized apartments on those 35 acres. Who Am I?
  

• Carmel’s Lori Kemp goes to court in less than a month for an harassment charge leveled against her for defending her property against a trespasser. All this could have been avoided had she just shot the guy in the back.

• Congressional Candidate Nan Hayworth has done a reorganization of her campaign website removing some of the more outlandish NRCC slogans in an attempt to move her more to the center than the tea bagger position she was happy to occupy until now.

• Congressional Democrats are having a hard time keeping the Wall Street money coming in to their campaign coffers, a weird kind of thanks for the trillion dollar bailout. Campaign donations are down 65% over two years ago. Instead, Wall Street is running towards Republican candidates who have promised to keep the wealthy rich, and the middle classes paying for everything… just the way Wall Street likes it.

• According to right-wing pundits, NASA’s new charge is to reach out to the Muslim world to make them feel good about themselves. But that’s not exactly right (no pun intended there,) as this is what Charles Bolden, NASA Administrator actually said during an interview with Al Jazeera: “When I became NASA administrator…[Obama] charged me with three things: one was he wanted me to help reinspire children to get into science and math, he wanted me to expand our international relationships, and third, and perhaps foremost, he wanted me to find a way to reach out to the Muslim world and engage much more with dominantly Muslim nations, to help them feel good about their historic contribution to science and engineering.” [emphasis, mine] Not quite the same thing.

• Here’s a list of the 50 Fattiest Foods in the United States, any one of which is a heart attack just waiting to happen and not one of them taxed extra special like NY taxes cigarettes. Since the tea baggers seem no longer to be around, as a protest to overt taxation I think I’ll quit smoking and eat each Prize Winner in turn. More people are dying today from heart disease than from lung diseases and yet the state seems to have a problem only with smokers. Huh. My mother was right, I should have been a lawyer for there’s a lawsuit in there somewhere.

• Come November 1st, a new state law will require that automobile drivers leave a “reasonable distance” between themselves and bicyclists on the roads when passing. And while this requires some drivers to start paying attention it also requires bicyclists to do the same. If you’re riding two feet inside the white line it’s virtually impossible for a driver to give you your three-feet else they’d be in oncoming traffic. So please, bear a little of the burden of mutual safety and move to the right when a car comes up behind you. Okay? Thanks.

• After washing their hands of the blood of more than 30,000 Kurds, Turkey warned Israel that unless they apologize for killing 9 Turkish terrorists back in May that the diplomatic manure will hit the fan. There were no immediate comments from the 1.5 million Armenians Turkey slaughtered at the beginning of the last century.

And now, The News:

• Short-term Hosting for Exchange students Needed Now!
• Lake Gleneida walking trail markers installed
• Walkway Over the Hudson: State lawmakers OK transferring ownership of bridge
• Orange County lands one corporate consolidation, another announcement comes today
• A run — or walk — for office
• Old movie houses find audience in Plains.
• The American people want more government spending
• TSA to Block “Controversial Opinion” on the Web – CBS News Investigates

Lake Gleneida walking trail markers installed

CARMEL – Under construction for the past year, the walking trail along the north and western sides of Lake Gleneida now has trail markers. The walking trail is on track to be opened to the public this fall. This beautiful unpaved walking trail begins near the intersection of Fowler Avenue and Route 301 in Carmel. Pictured is one of the trail markers installed (with approval by NYCDEP).

Later this fall when the trail is opened to the public, walkers along the western side of Lake Gleneida will be pleasantly surprised to see a white oak tree which is 19’ in circumference. As soon as its height is calculated, it will be entered into consideration as the largest one in Putnam County.

Read More

Walkway Over the Hudson: State lawmakers OK transferring ownership of bridge

Legislation to transfer ownership of the Walkway Over the Hudson from a nonprofit to the state passed the Legislature and awaits Gov. David Paterson’s signature.

The bill, which directs the state Bridge Authority to acquire and maintain the bridge, passed the Senate and the Assembly last month.

Assemblyman Frank Skartados, D-Milton, sponsored the Assembly version and Sen. Jose Serrano, D-Bronx, sponsored the Senate bill.

“This transfer will assure that this unique public asset will be there for future generations,” Skartados said Thursday.

The bill prohibits charging a toll on the bridge. It also changes the name from the Poughkeepsie-Highland Railroad Bridge to Walkway Over the Hudson in state records.

Read More

Orange County lands one corporate consolidation, another announcement comes today

WALLKILL – President Container will consolidate three Moonachie, NJ locations of its corrugated shipping container and point-of-purchase display manufacturing to the former Wakefern Distribution Center property in the Town of Wallkill.

The company will add about $ 9 million a year in payroll to the county and about $750,000 in annual taxes and other payments to local governments. The company plans on hiring local firms for professional services.

The new jobs and tax revenues generated by President Container will be an “economic windfall for the county,” said Orange County Partnership President Maureen Halahan.

Company Principal Larry Grossbard said President Container outgrew its present facilities and it has been looking to relocate for two years. He expects his business to increase 20 percent by 2012 with the move.

Read More

A run — or walk — for office

Dutchess County Legislator Joel Tyner, D-Clinton, walked through the county Sunday and Monday, but he wasn’t sightseeing. On his back was a bag big enough for Santa Claus with the words “$16 Billion in Tax Breaks for Wall Street” written in big letters on it.

And in front he carried a sign, “Tax Wall Street, not Main Street. FDR didn’t get us out of the Depression with budget cuts, layoffs and union busting: VOTE JOEL TYNER DEMOCRAT FOR GOVERNOR.”

Andrew Cuomo’s challenger for the Democratic nod was on the last leg of a 150-mile walk from New York City to Albany, a walk that he called “A Walk for Main Street, Not Wall Street.” And although tired and aching in his feet and legs, he was not on his last legs, but pumped up, happy to talk about why he’s running in a long-shot at the Executive Mansion.

“There are two main reasons I’m running/walking,” he said, as he took a few minutes from Monday’s heat for an air-conditioned interview in the Register-Star newsroom. “One is that by a four-to-one ratio, 56 percent to 14 percent, New Yorkers favor a tax on millionaires. Two is that by a three-to-one ratio, 63 percent to 24 percent, people are for a stock transfer tax.”
In the 1970s, Tyner said, millionaires paid taxes at a rate of 151⁄2 percent. Today, they pay less than 9 percent.

Read More

While the Cameo molds away…

Old movie houses find audience in Plains.

LANGDON, N. D. — Every Friday through Monday night, from her perch behind the Skittles and the M&M’s, Amy Freier awaits the faithful at the historic Roxy Theater. There is Dale Klein, the school bus driver (large Diet Pepsi with a refill). And there is Jeannette Schefter, the social worker (large plain popcorn, medium Diet).

“You know who comes,” said Ms. Freier, one of 200 volunteers in this town of roughly 2,000 who are keeping the Roxy’s neon glowing. “They’re part of the theater.”

In an age of streaming videos and DVDs, the small town Main Street movie theater is thriving in North Dakota, the result of a grass-roots movement to keep storefront movie houses, with their jewel-like marquees and facades of careworn utility, at the center of community life.

From Crosby (population 1,000), near the Saskatchewan border, to Mayville, in the Red River Valley, tickets are about $5, the buttered popcorn $1.25 and the companionship free.

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The American people want more government spending

Charles Ferguson is here to tell the world that the crisis that wiped out trillions of dollars in wealth, threw millions of people out of their homes and out of work, and further widened the gulf between rich and poor was no accident. It was a crime. Ferguson, a former software entrepreneur and policy-wonk scholar turned filmmaker, is definitely no left-wing bomb-thrower or closet Marxist. But he plays one in the movies, you might say. His new documentary, “Inside Job” — arguably the smash hit of Cannes so far — offers a lucid and devastating history of how the crash happened, who caused it and how they got away with it.

Furthermore, Ferguson argues, if we don’t stop those people — preferably by removing them from power, arresting them and sending them to prison — they will certainly do it again. “Inside Job” is as elegant, penetrating and well researched as Ferguson’s Iraq war film, “No End in Sight,” but it’s a hell of a lot angrier. To the discomfiture of some antiwar viewers, Ferguson struck a nuanced position on the war itself: It might have been a reasonable idea, in theory, and might have worked out if it hadn’t been managed by a coalition of ideologues, incompetents and idiots.

This story is quite different. There was nothing reasonable or decent or redeemable about the world of high finance, in Ferguson’s judgment, by the time the 21st-century bubble reached its peak around 2006. As he illustrates with a damning parade of interviews, images and public testimony, the financial industry had ridden 20-plus years of manic free-market deregulation and neoliberal fiscal policy from one crisis to the next, surfing a rising tide of greed and corruption. (There are several people in this movie, prominent among them former George W. Bush advisor Glenn Hubbard and Harvard economics chairman John Y. Campbell, who will rue the day they agreed to talk to Ferguson.)

Read More

TSA to Block “Controversial Opinion” on the Web – CBS News Investigates

The Transportation Security Administration (TSA) is blocking certain websites from the federal agency’s computers, including halting access by staffers to any Internet pages that contain a “controversial opinion,” according to an internal email obtained by CBS News

The email was sent to all TSA employees from the Office of Information Technology on Friday afternoon.

It states that as of July 1, TSA employees will no longer be allowed to access five categories of websites that have been deemed “inappropriate for government access.”

Read More

“…this Court now concludes that independent expenditures, including those made by corporations, do not give rise to corruption or the appearance of corruption. That speakers may have influence over or access to elected officials does not mean that those officials are corrupt. And the appearance of influence or access will not cause the electorate to lose faith in this democracy.” — US Supreme Court: Citizens United vs FEC

Good Friday morning,

Weather reports for the next few days are calling for windy and very cold conditions with sub-zero wind chills especially at night and in the mornings.

The standard neighbor deal applies: Check in on anyone you know who is living alone or is elderly or infirm. Don’t think that single 34 year old former high school football player and current NYC fireman will be fine. The loss of household heat over night, a slip in the shower… Anything can go wrong.

Tonight’s full Moon is the biggest and brightest full Moon of the year. It’s a “perigee Moon,” as much as 14% wider and 30% brighter than other full Moons you’ll see later in 2010. Mars is also having a close encounter with Earth, and tonight it will join the Moon for an all-night-long conjunction. Don’t miss it! Sky maps and images can be found at http://spaceweather.com.

There have been three notable deaths over the past few days. For one, author J.D. Salinger. If anyone has been to High School, the intensely private Mr. Salinger was part of your life – whether you wanted him to be or not.

His tale of teenage angst, “The Catcher in the Rye“, has been required reading in many school districts across the land and even banned in a quite a few. Between 1960 and 1981 “The Catcher in the Rye” was the most banned book in American schools and the tenth most frequently challenged book between 1990 and 1999 and remained so as late as 2005. Interestingly, in communities where the book was banned from classrooms, libraries saw a marked increase in requests. We are a very strange nation.

Second, we’ve lost one of our nation’s most astute and important historians, Professor and WWII veteran, Howard Zinn.

Mr. Zinn’s books have tasked several generations of Americans to reconsider the way they’ve been taught their own history, to seek verification from, and to question the authority of those who teach us using the standard model. He once said, “They have learned nothing, absolutely nothing, from the history of the 20th century, from a hundred years of retaliation, vengeance, war, a hundred years of terrorism and counter-terrorism, of violence met with violence in an unending cycle of stupidity.” His voice will truly be missed.

The most recent is that of Scottish musician Alistair Hulett who died at 57 years old for want of a liver transplant at a hospital in Glasgow.

Alistair’s reach has been everywhere from politics to Australian punk rock and he has toured the world playing with notable musicians such as Dave Swarbrick, David Rovics, Niamh Parsons and James Fagan. His acoustic version of The Internationale has moved thousands and is more than worth a listen.

Hudson Valley State Assemblyman Frank Skartados has submitted legislation that would transfer authority for the Walkway Over The Hudson to the NY Bridge and Tunnel Authority. The legislation gives control, not of the walkway itself which will remain with Parks and Rec, but the superstructure on which it rests. We smell an EZPass lane somewhere in our pedestrian and bicycling future.

“You have pushed some great buttons in this edition. The Verizon bill under the guise of full disclosure has made understanding it impossible; but you have shed bright light on the issue.  Thanks.”

You’re most welcome. I hope others were equally entertained and informed. But more than that, I hope this spurs you to some kind of action. Call Verizon’s billing support line and tell them what you now know to be true. They will argue with you. They will give you the Company Line. Take it, then tell the operator that when their shift is over to go home and look it up themselves but not at the Verizon website(!) but from any other independent source. Make them promise they will.

On Wednesday’s lead-in quote by the former Prime Minister of Malaysia, reader LR wrote:

“Your quote from the Palestinian source is also in my opinion inflammatory and does nothing to bring people together, instead it divides.”

Well, yes, that was the point. That’s exactly what Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad had in mind when he spoke those words last weekend. But it’s also important that you know that kind of talk goes on at the highest levels of governments… and not just in Palestine or Malaysia.

On Wednesday’s link to the TSA video shot by a guy at the Detroit airport, reader JG wrote:

“That TSA video is scary to watch.  It is all for the good of the public but maybe not all good for the public.”

The good part is that you should know your rights. The bad part is that the TSA has no clue what your rights are and where their place is.

“The Reliable Source found that a New York political action committee started by Ball — which later transferred its entire treasury to his campaign — netted as much as $10,000 by selling tickets to the 2005 Courage Cup. That’s four times the amount the polo match raised that year for its prominently advertised beneficiary, Work to Ride, a Philadelphia charity that teaches poor kids to play polo. ”

and

“I thought the money was going to kids,” said Andrew McKenna.”I’d be pretty [infuriated] if I found out this was for a political race.”

and

“I don’t recall supporting him,” said Eden Ellis, an acquaintance of Ball’s who remembered hearing about his political aspirations but didn’t know how $50 in her name ended up in CUEG’s filings. “I think I would have remembered that.”

Since he has not sued the Washington Post nor was a retraction posted, we must assume their reporting was accurate. He’ll fit in well with the State Senate.

The Progressive Caucus in the House of Representative is caught in a canoe without a paddle and the  waterfall is rapidly approaching.

Many of my Democratic Party friends were enthused by the President’s speech the other night. But we’re still in Afghanistan, gays still cannot serve openly in the military and are being discharged at an alarming rate, and health care “reform” has turned into a trillion dollar handout to insurance companies who are already making millions. They say, “be patient”. I say, “Don’t blame me. I voted for Nader”

The Artslink fund is a combination of State support through the New York State Council on the Arts Decentralization Program and county support through the Putnam Arts Fund.

Each year, a panel of artists, educators, business and community members reviews the many requests submitted by local arts groups through the Putnam Arts Council.  The panel then recommends funding for the projects it feels reach a broad audience, generate the most benefit to the community and support the professional development of artists and arts groups.

The 2010 Artslink recipients are:

• Aery Theatre Co. (sponsored by Garrison Landing Assoc.) for the 20/20 one-act play competition and festival at the Depot Theater in Garrison.
• Arts on the Lake for a full  production of the original musical “Troll-Loll-La” – new work by local professionals (Kent) (See Sunday below)
• Brewster Theater Co. for main stage & small stage productions and workshops at several locations – both free or affordable (Brewster area)
• Chapel of Our Lady Restoration Inc. for the 2010 music series of 7 concerts, both classical and jazz, by professional musicians in Cold Spring
• Collaborative Concepts for the 4th Annual outdoor sculpture exhibit on the rolling pastures of Saunders Farm in Garrison
• Desmond Fish Library for 3 series of photography workshops for children, teens & adults in different aspects of the medium in Garrison
• Doansburg Chamber Ensemble for the 2010 season of 6 chamber ensembles and two chamber orchestra concerts (county wide)
• Garrison Art Center for the School Invitational Theme Exhibit of students work from many area schools at Garrison Art Center
• Hudson Valley Shakespeare for “Family Night” ticket packages with  pre-show interactive workshops at Boscobel in Garrison
• Mahopac Public Library for “BAMM Mixed Bag” a series of 7 concerts by a wide variety of established & emerging artists at the library
• Nimham Mountain Singers for the cultural activities at the 10th Annual Daniel Nimham Intertribal Pow Wow at Veteran’s Park in Kent
• Nowodworski Foundation (sponsored by Brewster Library) for  project “SITE You Picasso” art workshops and exhibits for children at Brewster Library
• Philipstown Performing Arts for 2 full stage productions- original play by Richard Knipe and Three Penny Opera at the Depot Theater in Garrison
• Prelude Ballet Ensemble for a new ballet program to be performed free at a variety of venues, often with the West./Putnam Youth Symphony, designed to capture new ballet audiences
• Putnam Chorale for 2010 season of full concerts and chamber Ensemble performances & 2 community “sing alongs” (county-wide)
• Putnam Symphony Orchestra for a spring concert of music from opera and ballet favorites by full orchestra at the Performing Arts Center in Brewster
• Sunset Reading Series (sponsored by Butterfield Library) for 4literary readings at the Chapel of Our Lady Restoration, Inc. in Cold Spring.

Saturday:

Community Flea Market at the PV Grange

10AM – 4PM – Tables $12.50 in advance. $15 at the door. Proceeds to the Grange. Call Mary Mercedes for more information at 845.216.1934. The PV Grange is at Adams’ Cors at the corner of Mill Street and Peekskill Hollow Road.

Michelle LeBlanc

7:30PM to 10:30PM – Michelle will be playing Saturday nights starting January 16th at the Hudson House Inn in Cold Spring on Saturday evenings through February. Featuring jazz guitarist Steve Lamattina. The Inn is at 2 Main Street, Cold Spring NY  10516 Call 845 265 9355 for dinner reservations. The historic Hudson House Inn has world class food and offers elegant lodging overlooking the Hudson River and Storm King Mountain. Cold Spring is a charming getaway destination with wonderful river views, shops and antiques. Cold Spring’s Metro North train stop is only minutes away. www.hudsonhouseinn.com

Sunday:

Open Cast Call

The Bare Bones Theatre Company, is preparing an April production of Troll-Loll-La!, an original musical based on Norwegian folktales by Tony Howarth and Sheldon Gartner, at the Cultural Center on Lake Carmel. Open auditions for a cast of 18 will be held at the Center at 640 Route 52, in Kent on Sunday, January 31, starting at 1 p.m.

Troll-Loll-La!, which had a well-received reading at the Center in November 2008, will be directed by Howarth, with choreography by Bart Cook.  The musical director will be composer Gartner. Rehearsals are expected to begin February 6 and will be held mostly on weekends.  Performances are scheduled for April 9, 10, 11 at the Lake Carmel Cultural Center, home of Arts on the Lake.

Singers are asked to prepare a song for the audition and bring sheet music of the song for the accompanist.  Candidates will also be asked to read short selections from the script, which will be available at the audition.  Auditions will be scheduled on a first-come, first-served basis.

Characters include: FREDDIE, 16-20; KRISTINA, 16-20;  FREDDIE’S mother; KRISTINA’S father; PETER and PAUL, Freddie’s older brothers; STORYTELLER; A THREE-HEADED TROLL; THREE SPECTRES; TROLL MOTHER and her adult daughter, BABY TROLL; THE OLD WOMAN OF THE WOODS; THE WEST WIND; CHORUS of six; and several non-singing roles.

Further information is available by email to barebones300@aol.com or by leaving message at the Art Center, 845 228-2685.

Into the Future:

Saturday, February 6

Molly Mason and Jay Ungar in Concert

8PM – Join Molly Mason and Jay Ungar in concert at the Howland Cultural Center in Beacon for fundraising concert to benefit the Connie Hogarth Center for Social Action at Manhattanville College. 477 Main Street, Beacon. $20. Call 845.831.4988 for more information.

Teatown’s Hudson River EagleFest:

6th Annual Regional Celebration. 9:00am-4:00pm at Croton Point Park Major Sponsors: Friends of Westchester County Parks, Westchester County Parks, Club Fit. With additional support from TD Bank, Westchester County,  Croton-on-Hudson, and all EagleFest Collaborating Organizations.

EagleFest Headquarters and all theaters will be located in heated tents at Westchester County’s Croton Point Park. Free parking and shuttle buses from outlying lots, including a shuttle bus from Metro North’s Croton-Harmon Train Station. Ticket holders for all shows should allow at least 30 minutes for parking and shuttle rides.

EagleFest 2010 Features:

• Birds of Prey Shows in the Eagle Theater Tent
• Eagle Exploration Bus Tours
• Collaborators exhibits with educational displays
• Children’s area – with interactive games, crafts, and hands-on discoveries
• Additional presentations in the Eaglet Theater Tent
• Eagle Viewing Along the Hudson River
• And so much more!

Call Teatown at 914 762-2912 x110 to purchase tickets or for more informationAdmission to EagleFest Headquarters and River Sites is free, but a donation of $2 per person is suggested.

Bird Of Prey Shows, $5 per person
Eagle Exploration Bus Tours, $20 per person (ages 12+)

Saturday, March 6

Work on the Appalachian Trail

From Tim Messerich: So, I am a little bit a head of the game. Just wanted to let you know. Trail work starts on March 6 on the Appalachian Trail in Fahnestock State Park. So those who don’t know we have formed a club RPHCV.We are a member club of NY/NJ Trail Conference.We take care of RPHC on the AT plus do all kinds of great trail work projects. Oh, I almost forgot, our annual big trail work and campout is in July. The food Man, The food! Join our club, Our dues are cheap. Hope to see you on the trail, RPHCV. Call 845-297-9573 http://timtrek.mikentim.com

CCE Spring Garden School

Putnam Cornell Cooperative Extension Services. Their annual Spring Garden School will be held March 6 at the Desmond Fish Library in Garrison. Just when you’re ready for an end-of-winter break, our four classes will make a great day:

* Seed starting
* All-nature pest control
* Dealing with deer and other 4-legged critter
* Basic Garden Design

Hands-on learning plus lecture-style in a friendly environment.  The fee for the whole day is only $15 per person — and you can save $5 if you bring a friend (2 people = $25).  Be an early bird and sign up now. More information is here.

There’s a good bit in this Issue so grab your favorite beverage and read on…

Good Wednesday Morning,

It was 6.1 degrees this morning at the Asylum. Forecasters claimed it would only be 12.

This is the last edition of News That Matters for 2009 and it’s been one heck of an exciting year.

With the recent local elections, taking on the Tilly Foster contract, the Mt. Gilead blasting and Peekskill Hollow Road and everything in between, we’ve been all over the place and to be honest, I’m exhausted.

New Year’s Day Hike:

On New Year’s Day (Friday) join with other NtM readers for a trip into the wilds of central Putnam County along the Sunken Mine Road through Fahnestock State Park.

Sunken Mine, a Putnam Valley town road, is gated and closed to vehicular traffic from December 22nd until April so the solitude of the winter forest won’t be broken by motor vehicles making this a perfect walk through the wilderness. Dogs. Kids. Joy.

We leave at noon from the dirt parking area on Dennytown Road where the gated Sunken Mine road cuts in, about a half mile below Route 301.

Call ( 8 4 5 ) 2 2 5 – 2 1 0 4 by 10:30 that morning if the weather looks iffy.

Though the Chuan Yen monastery on Route 301 in Kent will not be serving lunch on Sunday’s until April, the Putnam Lake VFW is having their annual breakfast this Sunday – so if that’s been your deal, you’re in luck! It’s from 9 AM until noon and only 10 bucks. 4 Fairfield, Putnam Lake.

Over near Drewville Road in Carmel a resident discovered a bobcat caught in an illegal legtrap and two teens, one 17 and the other 13, were eventually arrested. Animal control officers released the cat and it took off into the woods. We do not know how injured it was. The Journal News article said, as usual, nothing much about the state of the animal but the Danbury paper had a tad more information.

At some time this past weekend a significant portion of the remaining facade collapsed as you can see from this image taken by Frank Carbone through a telescope. You used not to be able to see the back wall through the front The image shows the front section of the “castle” where the main stairs used to be. The NY Times wrote:

“But then in the silence of last Saturday night, a large chunk of history suddenly disappeared when the castle’s stone, brick and cement sighed under a century’s weight of weather. Overnight, two-thirds of the eastern tower was gone, as well as one-third of the adjacent southern wall, leaving a gaping hole and concern over how to stop the crumbling.“

In the meantime, the building is not going anywhere and it’s still a sight to see as anyone who has looked up – or down – the Hudson in that area will attest. There are some excellent photos of the site here, here and here.

A friend was out on the bridge last weekend. He said the temps were in the low 30′s and the wind was whipping strongly and he had to hold on to the railings, but the bridge was still crowded with people out enjoying the day.

Thanksgiving and Christmas days were both especially popular with local families out for a walk and even with the weather the bridge has not been closed for a single day. According to officials, day-time closings have amounted to a total of 15 hours. Yesterday with the high winds, the bridge was closed in the morning to remove debris from the entryways but opened again later in the afternoon with a suggestion that you spend no longer than 30 minutes exposed to the 40mph winds blowing up the river.

Once an LED lighting project is completed on the bridge, officials expect it to remain open for a while after dark as the bridge now closes at dusk.

Have you been up to the bridge yet? What did you think?

While we’re talking about bridges, the Champlain Bridge, a link as vital as the Tappan Zee, was demolished this morning in a controlled explosion in order to make room for a new bridge.

Back in October the state found that two of the supports on the bridge were no longer structurally sound and feared that it might collapse. At a public hearing residents cried FOUL! blaming the state for everything from bad breath to chilblains and demanded that the bridge stay open until it could either be repaired or replaced. Engineers agreed with the state: if the bridge stays open personal injury lawyers could get really rich.

In response, the states of New York and Vermont have started a free ferry service and construction will begin on a $67 million replacement due to be completed by the summer of 2011 using Federal dollars. However, as expected, local communities are already moaning and groaning about the project, its disruption, location, design and cost.

Years ago when I worked for the government of France I once asked a stagiaire, “You French, you complain about this, you complain about that. What would happen if everything was perfect?” He replied, “Then we’d complain that we have nothing to complain about!”

I’m starting to feel the same way about Americans.

TV station WPTZ has a video up. Catch it right at 2:15 for a super slow motion view that is truly cool.

Jack Dougherty and Claire Budzinski are two local youth who make up the band, The Farewell Season. On Saturday, January 9th at 7:30PM, they’ll be holding a special concert to release their latest album at the Cultural Center on Lake Carmel. If you’re a fan of local music or just want to support our youth, you should be here. What makes this event truly special is that The Farewell Season will be joined by three other local bands (Alphabet Soup, A Standard Protocol and Brad Schult’s Kid Jerusalem) who are known for their hard-driving rock and roll but in this case each will be performing a full acoustic set. I’m running sound for the show so you won’t be needing your earplugs but bring them anyway just in case. Tickets are on sale now at the Arts on the Lake website and are $6.

Ten-year old Sara Greiner, a middle school student in Commack, LI was suspended from school for dealing. Oh, it’s not what you think, but when you live in an hysterical nation people often do hysterical things.

The young girl had brought organic peppermint oil to school and added a few drops of it to her bottle of water and to those of her friends who asked. The School board, in a press release said, “Peppermint oil is an unregulated over-the-counter drug,”. Sheesh. We used to share all kinds of things in school back in the day.

Politifact was keeping track of what people said during the Health Reform debate this year and this is what they came up with:

True                     14.7 percent
Mostly True      10.3 percent
Half True             19.2 percent
Barely True       16.0 percent
False                     30.1 percent
Pants on Fire      9.6 percent

44% bears to the truth, 55% goes to the lies.
Read the full article here.

A Walmart in Pennsylvania was sued for having a surveillance camera in a bathroom at the store. Walmart’s Security and Privacy policy states that at “some stores and clubs [Walmart] may record your presence on security monitors for safety and security purposes,”. Several employees brought suit against Walmart for the camera and three of those who did were terminated by the corporation. Walmart declined to comment on the firings.

The Risk of Dying:

• Your odds of dying from cancer are 1 in 5
• The chance that you’ll die of lung disease is 1 in 7
• Your odds of dying in a car accident at some point in your life are 1 in 83.
• Your chance of being killed in a pedestrian accident are 1 in 526
• There’s a 1 in 10,048 chance you’ll die from alcohol poisoning.
• You have a 1 in 16,421 chance of being murdered over your lifetime.
• You have a 1 in 20,000 chance of dying from an asteroid strike.
• The chance of being killed by lightning was 1 in 79,746.
• You have a lifetime risk of 1 in 354,319 of dying in a non-terrorist related airplane crash.
• Over a ten year period the chance of being aboard an airplane involved in a terror attack was
  1 in 10,408,947 which, I admit, is three times more likely than being shredded by a mountain lion.
• Even if terrorists were to totally destroy one of our 40,000 shopping centers each week you’d only have a 1 in 1,000,000 chance of being at the right place at the wrong time.
• You have a 1 in 6,500,000,000 chance of dying from marijuana.

We spend $44,000,000,000 (that’s billion) a year making you take your shoes off at the airport (and now your pants, too!) and add billions more to lost productivity all to insure that 1 in 10,408,947 chance.

Now that you know the truth can we all just relax a bit? Please?

For a more complete list of your odds in life look here.

2009 will be remembered for a lot of things but mostly for the overt racism that exploded across the nation with the inauguration of the US’s first Black president.

Along with the racism came a resurgence in anti-intellectualism. “Tea Baggers” and “Birthers” don’t seem to understand the difference between political philosophies and equate Communism and Socialism and Fascism, conflating them all into as single philosophy. This either reflects our national education system or… I don’t know what. But when the likes of Glenn Beck, Bill O’Reilly, Rush Limbaugh and the Aile’s and Gannett and Murdock empires are doing the educating the outcome has been, as we’ve seen, deleterious to the social, moral and political health of our nation.

I don’t know what the solution is but when we raise a generation of children as the one pictured below, we need to stop what we’re doing and take a hard look at ourselves. Have we made the sacrifices necessary to maintain and protect the Constitution? Have we worked hard enough to counter the lies and misinformation that passes as news? Have we looked beyond political loyalties and placed our faith in our communities instead? When we can answer those questions with honesty and altruism we may begin to repair the damage done our nation this past decade.

But you have to act and you have to act now.

New Year’s Eve at 8:30 PM ~ Join Michelle and jazz pianist Tom Kohl for a lovely New Year’s Eve celebration in Cold Spring. Welcome in the new year in the comfort of the most beautiful Inn on the Hudson River. Come for dinner or extend your stay by reserving a room overlooking the River and Storm King mountain. New Year’s eve dinner is $75. per person. See the menu, get directions and call for reservations here.

Christmas Bird Count

Through January 5th – Join the Waterman Bird Club for the 110th(!) annual Christmas Bird Count. The Christmas Bird Count (CBC) was inaugurated at the turn of the last century by Frank Chapman of the National Audubon Society. The fascinating history of this annual event is detailed on the History page of the National Audubon Society’s CBC website. The purpose of this annual census, now enjoyed by over 50,000 participants throughout the western hemisphere each year, is to gather data that can be used to identify bird population trends from year to year, which in turn can help scientists understand environmental impacts of weather, habitat loss, industrialization, human expansion, and other factors. More information can be found here.

And now, The News:

1. And the Winners of the 2009 ‘Skeeter Bites Awards Are . . .
2. Top 10 Urban Legends of 2009
3. The Top 10 Infrastructure Stories of the Decade
4. 2009: The Photography is Not a Crime year in review
5. Drilling Wastewater Disposal Options in N.Y. Report Have Problems of Their Own
6. Car showrooms are reborn as places to play, learn
7. How Strasbourg Gave Up the Car (and Why Midsized American Cities Can Too)
8. Is aviation security mostly for show?
9. Cellphone Searches

And the Winners of the 2009 ‘Skeeter Bites Awards Are . . .

By Skeeter Sanders

As the first decade of the 21st century draws to a close — wow, has it really been ten years since we all rang in the new millennium? — it’s that time again to take a look back at some of what’s transpired over the past 12 months, make resolutions for 2010 — geez, we finally get to say “twenty-something” instead of “two-thousand-something” when referring to the year — and, of course, cast an eye on the crystal ball and predict who’ll win what in the upcoming awards season.

>From time immemorial, it seems, we mark the early months of each new year by bestowing awards to honor the best among us, such as the Golden Globes, the Grammys, the Oscars, the Tonys and the Emmys — and to dishonor the worst among us as well, such as Mr. Blackwell’s annual “Worst-Dressed Women” list and the Razzie Awards for the worst movies of the year.

In 2007, this writer chose to join in the awards-giving parade, but unlike the “Big Five” best-of entertainment awards and more in the tradition of Mr. Blackwell and the Razzies, I chose to join in the bestowment of “dishonors” to the most richly deserving crooks, liars, power-mad despots and just plain weirdos who’ve made life a lot more complicated for Americans and the world at large in the previous 12 months.

It seems that choosing the “winners” for the ‘Skeeter Bites Awards is getting more and more difficult, even though this is only the third year of the SBAs’ existence. Almost like the Energizer bunny, the list of nominees richly deserving these dishonors just keeps growing and growing and growing.

But, here goes . . .

Read More

Top 10 Urban Legends of 2009

by David Emery

Here, in ascending order of popularity as gauged by reader interest and site traffic, are the Top 10 Urban Legends, Rumors, and Internet Hoaxes of 2009:

10. August ‘Mars Spectacular’
Circulating for the sixth year running, this email hoax describes a “once in a lifetime” celestial phenomenon — the closest encounter between Mars and Earth for the past 5,000 years — which already occurred in 2003.

9. Burundanga Drug Warning
“In Katy, Texas a man came over and offered his services as a painter to a female putting gas in her car and left his card,” begins this overwrought message. “She said no, but accepted his card out of kindness and got in the car. Almost immediately, she started to feel dizzy and could not catch her breath. She tried to open the window and realized that the odor was on her hand; the same hand which accepted the card from the gentleman at the gas station.”

Read more

The Top 10 Infrastructure Stories of the Decade

Posted on Monday December 28th by Melissa Lafsky

The aughts have been called “The Decade From Hell,” and certainly there was more than enough bad news to justify the title. But the past decade has not lacked for major infrastructure stories, both in the U.S. and abroad. If it’s true that infrastructure is one of the most telling indicators of how a nation is faring, then there’s plenty to gain from examining the major trends around the world — and to see where the U.S. emerges in the greater scheme.

Here are the top 10 largest infrastructure-related stories of the past decade. While the list does include international projects, the focus is on the U.S.

Read More (Read Part 2)

2009: The Photography is Not a Crime year in review

By Carlos Miller

It was a year that firmly established Photography is Not a Crime as a national blog, going from an average of more than 700 page views a day in 2008 to more than 4,000 in 2009.

A year in which PINAC was mentioned in both The New York Times and Playboy Magazine as well as several other respectable publications throughout the country.

A year that resulted in me getting arrested again for photographing police against their wishes.

But the most significant highlight for me this year was winning my appeal pro se on my first arrest; a legal victory that nobody will ever take away from me.

It was also a year of nonstop police abuses against photographers, videographers and journalists. A year where a multitude of videos continued to pop up on the internet revealing blatant police abuses against civilians as well as numerous incidents where police were too quick to use their Taser.

So let’s take a look at what went down in 2009.

Read More

Drilling Wastewater Disposal Options in N.Y. Report Have Problems of Their Own

by Joaquin Sapien and Sabrina Shankman, ProPublica – December 29, 2009 12:01 am EST

The site of one of Canada-based Gastem USA’s wells in Otsego County, N.Y. The well produced far less wastewater than most Marcellus Shale wells will, but it still took the drillers more than a year to get permission to drill it, because they couldn’t find a place to dispose of the water. (Joaquin Sapien/ProPublica)
The site of one of Canada-based Gastem USA’s wells in Otsego County, N.Y. The well produced far less wastewater than most Marcellus Shale wells will, but it still took the drillers more than a year to get permission to drill it, because they couldn’t find a place to dispose of the water. (Joaquin Sapien/ProPublica)

Environmentalists, state regulators and even energy companies agree that the problem most likely to slow natural gas drilling in the Marcellus Shale in New York is safely disposing of the billions of gallons of contaminated wastewater the industry will produce.

Between 1,500 and 2,500 wells per year could eventually be drilled into the huge natural gas reserve, state regulators say [4], although other estimates are far higher [5] (PDF). Each well will produce about 1.2 million gallons of wastewater that can contain chemicals introduced during the drilling process and dredged up from deep within the earth. Using the state’s higher estimate, that means the industry will have to find a way to dispose of as much as 3 billion gallons a year, enough to fill 5,000 Olympic-sized swimming pools.

Read More

Car showrooms are reborn as places to play, learn

By JULIE CARR SMYTH

Font Size: Default font size Larger font size With hard times in the auto industry and car dealerships closing around the country, the gleaming showrooms that once featured next year’s models are becoming this year’s new store, restaurant, school, day care center or yoga studio.

In Lane County, Ore., Joe Softich from Catholic Community Services helps erect shelves and unload boxes for a new food bank warehouse inside a former auto showroom. In Tulsa, Okla., teenagers at Northside Christian Church skateboard in what was once a showroom’s auto service center.

Students on the campus of the Columbus College of Art & Design in Ohio can learn in a space where evidence of automaking’s proud past is still visible in the exposed concrete pillars, sturdy tile floors and ascending spiral vehicle ramp.

Architects and historians say the shock that American automakers could go bankrupt has combined with depressed real estate values and enthusiasm for green energy to bring a unique level of interest to reusing showrooms.

Read More

The French Revolution

How Strasbourg Gave Up the Car (and Why Midsized American Cities Can Too)

By Ben Adler

Strasbourg, France, where the European parliament meets, is a thoroughly modern regional capital of Western Europe. Its downtown is filled with department stores, teenagers of any ethnicity sporting a European style that takes a lot of inspiration from their American counterparts of five years ago, and shwarma shops competing with McDonald’s for their attention. But walk around Strasbourg’s charming medieval city center and you will see that one thing is virtually unchanged from its medieval origins: the absence of automobiles.

This is not, however, an uninterrupted history. In fact, it is the direct result of actions recently taken by Strasbourg’s government — ones that should inspire comparably sized older American cities, from Buffalo to St. Louis. Just like most American cities, the car’s midcentury domination had largely forced public transportation out of Strasbourg. The once-extensive tram lines fell into disrepair, and the last one was taken out of service in 1960. But by 1989 traffic and parking had become major headaches for residents and for businesses in the dense warren of downtown streets. Rather than see retail flee to suburban malls, as it did in America, the city decided to take action.

This being France, where the entire political spectrum is to America’s left, the conservatives running for city council in 1989 actually favored building a subway. But the socialists, led by Catherine Trautmann and Roland Ries, wanted to build a new tram. Conservatives and local business owners objected, arguing that a tram would take precious lanes away from cars. But that was exactly the point: to transform streets from hectic, unpleasant gasoline alleys into vibrant, multi-use communal spaces. “The tram means that you change the city,” explains Jonathan Naas, transportation policy coordinator for Roland Ries, who is now mayor. By creating a buffer from the cars, he says, “You create places to walk, outdoor cafes to sit outside.”

Read More

Is aviation security mostly for show?

By Bruce Schneier, Special to CNN
STORY HIGHLIGHTS

* Incident on Detroit-bound plane led to tightening of airport security
* Bruce Schneier says politicians react to incidents by imposing “security theater”
* Trying to predict what terrorists will do next is futile, Schneier says
* He says it’s better to put resources into investigations

Editor’s note: Bruce Schneier is an author and technologist who specializes in security. His books include “Applied Cryptography,” “Beyond Fear” and “Schneier on Security” and his other writing can be seen at http://www.schneier.com/

(CNN) — Last week’s attempted terror attack on an airplane heading from Amsterdam to Detroit has given rise to a bunch of familiar questions.

How did the explosives get past security screening? What steps could be taken to avert similar attacks? Why wasn’t there an air marshal on the flight? And, predictably, government officials have rushed to institute new safety measures to close holes in the system exposed by the incident.

Reviewing what happened is important, but a lot of the discussion is off-base, a reflection of the fundamentally wrong conception most people have of terrorism and how to combat it.

Terrorism is rare, far rarer than many people think. It’s rare because very few people want to commit acts of terrorism, and executing a terrorist plot is much harder than television makes it appear.

Read More

Cellphone Searches

The Ohio Supreme Court has struck an important blow for privacy rights, ruling that the police need a warrant to search a cellphone. The court rightly recognized that cellphones today are a lot more than just telephones, that they hold a wealth of personal information and that the privacy interest in them is considerable. This was the first such ruling from a state supreme court. It is a model for other courts to follow.

Searches generally require warrants, but courts have carved out limited categories in which they are not needed. One of these is that police officers are allowed, when they arrest people, to search them and the area immediately surrounding them, as well as some kinds of containers in their possession.

When the police arrested Antwaun Smith on drug charges they seized his cellphone and searched it, examining his call records. The police did not have a warrant or the consent of Mr. Smith.

Read More

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